Vintage Dead was produced without the approval or cooperation of the Grateful Dead.[1] However, it is a legal recording, not a bootleg.[6] An upstart label called "Together Records" assembled live recordings of various Bay Area bands for a planned anthology. When the imprint collapsed, MGM paid the remaining debt and assumed the tapes, releasing two albums of Grateful Dead material on their Sunflower Records subsidiary.[7] The first, Vintage Dead, reached number 127 on the Billboard 200.[8] Produced as a vinyl LP and long out of print, it has not been released as a Compact Disc.

Vintage Dead was then followed by Historic Dead, another Sunflower Records album recorded at the Avalon in 1966.